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Read the biography of any business icon and you will find that failure played a defining role in his/her ultimate success. Were these individuals successful in spite of their failures or because of them? Or maybe it’s their response to failure that establishes them as leaders and separates them from the pack. “Failure,” in the form of rejection or a lost deal, is a fact of life for sales professionals. Here are some tips to make the most of your failures: Keep it in perspective. Failure can be an event or a frame of mind, and its role in your sales life will depend on how you cast it. View failure as permanent and pervasive, and it becomes a frame of mind that jades your overall perspective and fuels a defeatist attitude. View failure as temporary, and in the context of an isolated event, and it has much less power to undermine your confidence and future endeavors. Survivor or victim? Choose to be a survivor instead of a victim when failure occurs. Victims focus on the perpetrator, with no responsibility taken and no progress made. Survivors build the internal strengths that carry them through tough times – a practice that is both empowering and motivating. Use every failure as a learning opportunity. Failure is never fun, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. Explore with customers and prospects to understand why you did not get the business, but be sure to do so in a positive manner. Your goal is to gain insight, not to make the customer feel guilty for not choosing you. The message, “I always want to learn from my experiences to improve for the future. Would you be willing to share feedback on why you went with another provider?” is much more productive than, “I’m so sad and dejected. Why didn’t you choose me?” Let it go. “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die” (source: unknown). Failure is painful, and it can be difficult to let go of the disappointment. But holding a grudge against the organization or individuals who didn’t buy from you only weighs you down and limits your own opportunities in the future. Resolve to not fear and be defined by failure. Instead, use it as a spring board for your future success!

For many of us, email has become our primary mode of communication with internal team members and customers alike. That being the case, we need to be sure we are composing emails for maximum impact and benefit, and also with a degree of quality that boosts our professional image. In his recent HBR blog, Write E-Mails That People Won\’t Ignore, Bryan Garner shares some excellent tips for making sure your emails get read. The following stood out as the best insights: Stick to standard capitalization and punctuation. Conventions of good writing may seem like a waste of time for e-mail, especially when you\’re tapping out messages on a handheld device. But it\’s a matter of getting things right – the little things. Even if people in your group don\’t capitalize or punctuate in their messages, stand out as someone who does. Rushed e-mails that violate the basic norms of written language bespeak carelessness. And their abbreviated style can be confusing. It takes less time to write a clear message the first time around than it does to follow up to explain what you meant to say. Get straight to the point (politely, of course). Be direct when making a request. Don\’t butter up the recipient first – although a brief compliment (POSITIVE CONTACT) may help (\”Great interview. Thanks for sending it. May I ask a favor?\”). Spell out deadlines and other details the recipient will need to get the job done right and on time. Be brief. People find long e-mails irksome and energy-sapping. The more they have to scroll or swipe, the less receptive they\’ll be to your message. They\’ll probably just skim it and miss important details – or skip it altogether. So rarely compose more than a single screen of reading. Add a short but descriptive subject line. Before hitting \”Send,\” check your subject line. If it\’s generic or blank, your message will get lost in your recipient\’s overstuffed inbox. Are you asking someone to take action? Highlight that in the subject line. Make your request easy to find – and fulfill. Of course, the other consideration regarding customer email is whether you are overusing it in lieu of in-person meetings or phone calls. Email is a wonderfully efficient communication tool, but it can never replace personal interaction.

Technically, sales isn\’t a sport; it\’s a complex and rewarding profession. But since customer contact is in many ways the life blood of sales, we should periodically reflect on the quality of our own customer contact efforts and whether we are optimizing them to achieve the best possible results. Consider your customer contact habits in terms of P-V-F: P – Be POSITIVE. Every customer interaction should begin with Positive Contact, and that upbeat and empowered energy should continue for the duration of the session. Positive energy conveys enthusiasm, confidence and commitment – all of which are key ingredients to building trusting and productive customer relationships. We all have days when we feel burdened with concerns or complaints, but our customers are simply not the appropriate audience for this content. Always strive to be a bright spot in your customer\’s day! V – Add VALUE. In every customer interaction, you should be able to identify the value you provided. Checking in with customers to \”see if they need anything\” is not adding value; reaching out to share a product or service which would benefit their organization and support their goals, IS adding value. Other examples of adding value include: following up to gauge satisfaction with a recent purchase, reaching out with additional insight that is relevant to a past discussion with the customer, sharing relevant industry insights or updates, or recommending an interesting book, white paper or article. F – FREQUENCY. Be purposeful with the frequency of your customer contact. Not every customer warrants or desires the same regularity of contact, but you should have a strategy and plan for your contact frequency with every single customer and prospect. Be sure to link your plan to your daily/weekly/monthly routine. Incorporate reminder prompts into your calendar. Make planned customer outreach a part of every day. Proactive and purposeful customer contact facilitates strong customer relationships, and, because it keeps us better attuned to our customers’ attitudes and needs, it greatly reduces the amount of time we spend putting out fires and repairing customer dissatisfaction.

I have seen the future of sales and it is very BRIGHT! For one week this spring, the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Houston became the center of the sales universe for over six hundred collegiate Pi Sigma Epsilon (PSE) members, as they held their annual national convention and Pro-Am Sell-A-Thon® competition. PSE is the only national, professional, fraternity for men and women in the fields of sales, marketing and management. PSE gives its collegiate members a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience, participate in conferences both regionally and nationally, and network with top executives through PSE’s corporate partners. Currently, PSE has more than 60 active chapters at universities nationwide, and each spring they gather the brightest of these chapters for the national conference and sales competition. This past year, PSE selected Carew International to provide the Pro-Am Sell-a-Thon sales skills materials for each student to study and use in the competition, as well as sales skill trainers and coaches for the year-long competition. It was in this capacity that I had the opportunity to witness firsthand the exceptional opportunity provided by PSE in its Pro-Am Sell-a-Thon, as well as the impressive talent among the participants. This competition gives students interface with real-world sales professionals, allows them to receive training and coaching on current sales concepts, and participate in a hands-on application to sell a product in a professional setting. At the outset of our engagement with PSE, Carew team members viewed our contribution as a means to support an exemplary organization and cultivate sales excellence in these young, committed students as they prepared to embark on a professional sales career. We came away from the experience truly inspired and feeling as though we were the benefactors. From the quality of the sales presentations, it was clear that this year’s crop of business and sales professionals are ready to take the business world by storm. The student sales people were prepared, organized and focused on developing their buyers’ needs and offering solutions that created value for their buyers. Carew will once again support the PSE National Convention and Pro-Am Sell-A-Thon® regional and national competitions, and we encourage our clients to consider becoming involved as sponsors in this worthwhile event. The Pro-Am competitions are also a terrific recruiting opportunity for young sales talent demonstrating sales effectiveness and capabilities. All of us at Carew International are proud to be associated with Pi Sigma Epsilon (PSE) and to be actively involved in the development of sales talent for our future!

In Dimensions of Professional Selling (DPS) sales training, we identify five types of questions in the Exploratory process – Overview, Focusing, Realization, Closing and Dimensional – each with a specific purpose. Dimensional questions allow us to engage our customers who are “fully satisfied” and open our customers\’ minds to the possibility of improvement beyond what they thought possible. Dimensional questions reflect our previous explorations with customers and tend to be very specific to each individual customer and his or her situation, making it somewhat challenging to provide generic examples of Dimensional questions. To help you generate your own examples of Dimensional questions, apply your solutions and customer situations to the examples below: Are you aware that a number of organizations are [increasing productivity/decreasing costs/idle time, etc.] by [your solution]? What would the impact of that improvement look like at your organization?   You have been creating excellent results without using all the [technology/products/systems/insight] available to you. With your permission, I’d like to show you how using [your solution] could generate better results.   Several of my customers have noticed [a shortening of their sales cycle/reduction in costs/other benefit] with the implementation of [a sales process/other solution]. What impact would you expect from such a result?   If I could show you an approach that will [lower your production costs/other benefit], what effect would that have on your overall [manufacturing/other area]?   Your situation seems satisfactory; I have some thoughts on how you might be able to generate even better results. May I share those with you? [OR] Would you be interested in hearing my thoughts? I see a new issue emerging that could affect [the product costs/delivery time/etc.] of your [desired outcome], and I am wondering how you see that?   I wanted to share with you this [article/other reference source] that represents a situation similar to yours. How closely related is that issue to conditions in your organization? What are some areas we might be able to focus on that lend themselves to improvement?   When supported with a thorough Exploratory process, and thoughtful planning and positioning, Dimensional questions can reveal the most dramatic opportunities for value creation and drive improved position with customers.

Why is getting support for new ideas such a challenge? By nature, human beings are not fond of change; we are suspect of new things about which we know nothing and new initiatives in which we had no input. The following tips serve as guidance to help us understand these basic human characteristics, minimize their disruption to progress, and maximize our success when seeking support for new ideas: Leverage the minds around you: New ideas have a much better survival rate when they are nurtured, tested and then delivered by a group, versus a single individual. Our egos can cause us to seek absolute control over our best ideas. But taking sole ownership over our ideas and being reluctant to share the credit costs us the benefit of input and feedback (including questions, opposing views and pushback) from others in our organization or the customer organization. Mix it up: The format and time allotted for you to \”present\” your idea will fluctuate. Be prepared to articulate your idea in a written, spoken, and visual format, as well as in varying timeframes. Your immediate supervisor may read your 10-page proposal and sit through an hour-long presentation, but other decision makers may not be as generous. Therefore, it is essential that you be able to share your vision across many formats, whether it is via a two-minute elevator pitch or a two-hour presentation. Think in terms of a campaign, not an event: If your revolutionary ideas haven\’t been well received in the past, consider seeking incremental agreement to your new concept. In history, and in business, the most significant changes often come in small steps. Keep your focus on continual progress toward your goal rather than expecting one glorious and dramatic event. Propose a pilot: The level of resistance to change is reduced significantly if the change is temporary. Proposing a test, or pilot of your concept, with a provision for review and assessment, will disarm even the most risk averse in your audience. Whether making a sales pitch to customers or pitching a new idea within your own organization, there are many factors that impact your level of influence. Simple strategies like these will better position your next big idea for acceptance.

In his recent HBR blog, Why the Best Salespeople Get So Lucky, author Joel Le Bon asserts that there are tangible benefits to sales professionals believing in the role of “luck” in their sales success. Even more valuable than a belief in the power of luck are the specific behaviors he identifies for creating one’s own luck, and in turn, one’s sales success. Here is a summary: 1. Gathering competitive intelligence – The more insight you possess about customers, prospects, competitors and the market, in general, the more likely you are to “happen upon” pertinent information. It may feel “lucky,” but prolific research is the precursor to noticing relevant news and mining useful intelligence. 2. Striving for mindfulness – Building on the insight that comes with ongoing research, sales professionals should remain focused on customers’ objectives and alert to what is going on within the industry. Being mindful of the context surrounding the client will not only make you more intriguing to the client, but will also prepare you to act on unexpected opportunities. 3. Setting high goals – Ambitious goals keep sales professionals forward-looking. Goals that are far-reaching help to make us more creative, motivated and strategic. 4. Failing better – Failure is a fact of life in the sales profession, so it is important for us to remain positive in the face of failure. Set “failure goals,” such as being denied by X number of customers in a given day or month. Doing so recognizes the inevitability of failure within our broader sales efforts, and amidst successful sales outcomes. 5. Changing circumstances – Le Bon writes, “In sales, opportunities lie not among the people you know but among those you don’t.” He suggests getting out of your routines and comfort zone, meeting new people, doing new things, and expanding your network by going to unusual places and building new alliances. Sales professionals may be reluctant to rely on “luck” because of its uncontrollable nature. What sales professionals can rely on, is a belief in provoked luck—the kind of luck that results from arming ourselves with a positive mindset and productive behaviors like those outlined above. This approach will influence whether uncontrollable events become “lucky” or “unlucky” occurrences in our sales life.

Recently there has been a great deal of attention placed on the importance of offering new insights to customers to win their business. Insight is a critical element of sales, but only as one piece of a holistic sales process. Insight alone is nothing more than data, and it certainly isn’t enough to win new business or dislodge your competitors. The sales process is a lot like gourmet cooking, with insights/data being comparable to the ingredients used to prepare the dish. High quality, fresh ingredients are paramount to creating quality dishes; but on their own, ingredients are just groceries sitting on the counter. And the best ingredients in the world won’t matter if you don’t understand the tastes and needs of those who will consume the meal – like preparing the world’s best Lobster Newburg and then finding out your dinner guest is allergic to shell fish. Oops. Perhaps most important of all is the creative process of actually preparing the food. Once you understand the wants and needs of your dinner guest, have planned the perfect meal, and purchased the best ingredients, you still need the skills to take the information/ingredients, and make something amazing! Consider the quality and source of the “insights” you bring to customers in pursuit of new business. If your revolutionary insights have not been researched and vetted to align with the needs of your customer organization’s strategy and capabilities, they won’t be received with much enthusiasm/appetite. Only with the benefit of the customer’s perspective and input can we leverage our “insights” as a strategic advisor to the customer. Once insights are gathered, how well are we positioned and prepared to share them with customers? Without the relationship or the skills to engage customers, we will not have the credibility to share our insights; and certainly not to challenge the current thinking or practices of customers and their organizations. It takes specific skills – exploratory, relationship-building and diagnostic skills – to leverage data as the spring board to transform insights into solutions, win new business and become the preferred business asset to customers.

Sales is a stream of business, which may be safely defined as the spine and the nervous system. The entire life and sustenance of a business depends on the sales situations that the venture experiences, if the sales are high, the business may pull it through and grow, but if it fails, the entire venture may fail and collapse. This is the reason why a strong base in sales is essential for the smooth and successful running of a business. The sales personnel of a firm should possess retail selling skills so that they may be able to shoulder the responsibility of an enterprise and do so with expertise and ease. There are some simple measures that one may follow in order to make a successful sales pitch for their product or service. The first and most important is to understand the needs of the clients. Different people have different demands and each demand must be respected and worked upon, if the sales personnel wants to make a mark. The way in which the sales pitch is initiated towards a prospective client is also of importance and the skill must be developed if the professional wants to be a success. A good explanation of the products or services to be sold, when given to the client, serves as the best sales tool for anyone who is pitching the deal. Upselling and cross selling are important aspects of retail sales, when a client seems to be in the flow of investment, these techniques of sales are said to work the best. Apart from the function of sales, keeping an open mind to the problems and criticisms of a client are also important tools towards relationship building and future sales prospects. When a good rapport is built with a client, the process of sales becomes an ongoing one. These tips in retail selling skills, prove to be extremely effective in establishing a long term business relationship with customers. When a business venture seeks to thrive for a long period of time and there is a need to expand, the best way to do it is by having effective sales strategies and an effective and well trained sales team. If you are looking at honing your own skills in sales or the skills of your employees, you must place your trust in the professional and effective sales training from experts at RJA Sales training.

Want key customer insights that will facilitate valued solutions and dramatic results? Maybe all you need to do is ask… The Exploratory Process is critical to finding the area of opportunity with new and existing customers. Often, the absence of strategic questioning undermines effective diagnostics and, as a result, the development of exceptional solutions. In the Exploratory Process, we identify five types of questions: Overview, Focusing, Realization, Closing and Dimensional. Each question type has a specific purpose and optimal application, but Dimensional questions may best deliver the stand-out competitive advantage we seek. Questioning for needs identification is standard fare in every sales situation and for every sales professional. Unique insight demands unique exploratory skills. Dimensional questions allow us to engage the customer who is “fully satisfied,” and open the customer’s mind to the possibility of improvement beyond what they thought possible. Introducing an entirely new level of desired outcomes is an effective means of dislodging a current competitor, or further instilling loyalty and trust among existing customers. Dimensional questions reflect a more sophisticated and complex diagnostic effort, creating value in the sales process and earning trust and credibility in the relationship. They are a powerful tool and as such, must be used with care and skill. If not prefaced with the appropriate customer exploration, discussion and research, Dimensional questions could be perceived as manipulative or arrogant. When used amid thoughtful planning and positioning, Dimensional questions can reveal the most dramatic opportunities for value creation, as well as your progression to preferred position with customers.